The Sun Herald announced Michael’s candidacy on the front page of the second section. Many of the doctors and other staff had read it. A few were curious about why he was leaving the medical profession. He told them it was only temporary. Most wished him well.
In the emergency department, he straightened from examining a little girl who sat on a stool in front of him. Her mother looked at him.
“She could have asthma,” he said. “But I don’t think so. Even if she does, many children eventually grow out of it. You’re moving to Pensacola?”
The woman nodded.
“I’m going to write in the chart that I treated her for a cough. If I put down the possibility of asthma and later an insurance company finds the notation in her records—even if she doesn’t have asthma or has grown out of it—she’ll have a hard time getting medical insurance at a normal rate in the future. If her cough comes back—becomes chronic—when you see a doctor in Pensacola, you need to tell him there’s the possibility of asthma. But I think she’s going to be fine.”
The woman, a petite blonde with long hair hanging past the shoulders of a noticeably faded blouse, smiled at him. “Thank you, Doctor.”
He wondered if she even had insurance. Her skirt was also faded from so many washings—and they had come into the emergency department in the middle of the day rather than go see a doctor at his office. He hoped maybe when he got to Congress he could do something about people in that kind of situation, too. He looked back at the little girl. When she had walked into the department beside her mother, he had thought of how much she reminded him of Candice. Especially her smile. He patted her on the shoulder. She rose from the stool and walked to her mother.
“If you’ll just give me a minute,” he said, “I’ll write up her discharge papers and you can get on out of here.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” the woman said again.
As Michael walked toward the counter, Olga Lindestrom approached him. “I hate that we’re going to lose you,” she said as she stopped in front of him. “But maybe you can help us more as a Congressman. We so badly need medical care that everyone can afford—and if anyone can help to persuade politicians in Washington of that, I’d put my money on you.” She looked toward the blonde and her child. Then her gaze came back to his. She patted him on the shoulder.
“Good luck, Doctor.”
* * *
Shannon listened over her speakerphone as Sheriff Everette summarized the results of his department’s hastily done background check on Dr. Michael Sims and his family.
“Basically it’s your average Joe family, maybe slightly above average financially until the old man died. He was a throwback to the old-fashioned general practitioner; had his own one-doctor office in Gulfport. Died with a lot of patients who would go to the wall for him, but a lot who hadn’t paid their bills either. Turned out he had zilch to leave to his wife and son. She hadn’t worked out of the home a day in her life. She opened a little pottery place and made ends meet. Michael graduated fourth in his medical school class and was chief resident in emergency medicine in his last year at the medical center. Moved back here, and been working at Coastal Regional for a little over a year. No bad marks on his record of any kind.”
Shannon bit absent-mindedly at her thumbnail as she continued to listen.
“As far as the politics, the old man was drafted into being Republican county chairman when nobody else would have the position. I can remember those days: Sometimes during a primary election you couldn’t find anybody at the Republican polls but the poll watchers. As the party grew in the state, his power did, too. His involvement pretty much ended when Jonathan Waverly moved here from Los Angeles and more or less took over your father’s campaigns—but you and your mother would know more about that than the people my deputies spoke with. In other words, the whole family, the young Dr. Sims included, is about as clean as they come—at least on the record.”
Shannon removed her thumbnail from her mouth.
“Thanks,” she said, “I owe you one.”
She cut off the speakerphone.
Carol stood in the office doorway. “If you ask me, Shannon, if Waverly took the congressman away from Dr. Sims’s father, then Sims and Waverly wouldn’t exactly be bosom buddies. But you didn’t ask me.”
Shannon nodded. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
“By the way, Judge Cox moved Ronnie Packard’s case back for you indefinitely—he said you should call him when you’re ready. He said to tell you how sorry he was about your father.”
Off to Shannon’s side, the smoke detector hanging on the wall close to the fireplace chirped.
Carol stared at it. “That thing eats batteries—I just put new ones in it a couple of months ago.”
* * *
Inside his office, Sheriff James Everette, leaning back in his chair, had gazed idly up into the air after finishing the conversation with Shannon. Now he looked at his chief deputy, Dennis Allen, sitting in a straight chair at the other side of the desk.
“Dennis, that wasn’t for a case she’s been hired on. It’s about her father. How does knowing about Dr. Sims have anything to do with the congressman?”
Allen, a tall, raw-boned man of twenty years’ service, pushed a cut of chewing tobacco into his mouth and moved it to the inside of his cheek before he spoke.
“She’s heard something. Or imagined something. Bottom line is she doesn’t want to accept the fact her father could kill himself.”
“There would be hell to pay if we said it’s suicide,” Everette mused, “and she comes up with something showing it isn’t.”
“Come on, Sheriff.”
“Dennis, what would you say is the strongest case we ever had against a murderer?”
“Damn, there’ve been a load of ’em.”
“Gerald Clayton,” Everette said. “His mother was beaten to death. He was standing there scratched up. Everybody in town knew he was a crackhead; she had called us on his stealing from her before. We knew right then at the scene that the skin she had under her fingernails was going to be his. It was. He tried to say his mother scratched him when he tried to lift her from the floor after he found her like that. You remember that, too, don’t you? When Shannon had the body exhumed though, there was more skin under the woman’s nails than just that one sample. DNA didn’t match. Semen on her clothes didn’t match either.”
Dennis shook his head. “I’m still not certain he wasn’t in on it.”
“I am—he wasn’t. But that isn’t the point. The point is that when you and I first saw the scene, we would have bet our lives that we knew exactly what happened. It isn’t emotion on Shannon’s part anymore—if it’s ever been. I’m telling you, I know her. She’s not the type to give in to emotion—she’s tough. Hell, I coached her in youth-league softball. She was a little tiny thing then, but a catcher didn’t want to get in her way when she was coming toward home plate. And when she makes up her mind about something, she’ll hang on to it like a snapping turtle. This crap about her telling us she has an important case … When she was a little girl and wanted something, she could look up at you with those big green eyes and tell you anything and you’d believe it. She has some serious reason to be doubting it’s a suicide—at least what she thinks is a serious reason. What I want to know is where Dr. Sims fits in in her mind.”
Everette paused as he sat up in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. “I’m going to wait until after the funeral, give her time to collect her thoughts. Then I think it’ll be about time for me to go speak with her one-on-one. Meanwhile, you see if you can do a little more checking on Dr. Sims.”
“What else is there to check?”
“You’ll think of something.”